Whereat the Two Swore On the Field of Death a Deathless Love
by CBK1000
Summary: T.H. White got a few things wrong. The author attempts to correct. 'The Once and Future King'/Merlin mash-up; now with 50% more gay.


**A/N: Hello! A couple of notes: since no one has ever managed to confirm for sure that Arthur of Camelot was a real person, all these stories remain legends, which means I can piece together whatever I like from the Medieval period. Also, as it says in the summary, this is a mash-up of TOAFK and Merlin, so there will be many references to both, and, in TOAFK at least, purposeful anachronisms were the name of the game. The original legends place him as reigning at some point in the 6th century; this is set quite a bit later, in accordance with TOAFK.**

 **There are many spellings of Igraine throughout the legends; I used Malory's original. Also, the quote which describes the Questing Beast is from 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. The title is taken from Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King'.**

 **This was originally intended as a long oneshot, but I tend to get carried away, and I did so here. I didn't want to have to proofread a gigantic glob of text all at once, so this will be split into two or three parts. Probably three, on account of my aforementioned wordiness.**

 **Also, while this is mostly chronological in terms of the show, I do bend things and switch some stuff around, and will continue to do so throughout the fic, so just FYI that some things do occur out of sequence. This is my first Merlin fic, so I hope I haven't bungled it too terribly. I've had a lot of fun working on it so far.**

* * *

It befell in the time of Uther Pendragon that there was born a boy who would be called The Once and Future King, and a boy who would be called Emrys; but for the moment they were only called Arthur and Merlin, respectively. And the boy Arthur was sometimes called Wart, but not often, for Uther did not remember that a son can have many names of various affectionate origins, and a Prince may only have one.

Now you may be thinking that the wizard Merlin was not begot in the time of Uther, because after all Merlin is a very old man, of the sort which a polite society calls 'eccentric' and a candid one 'mad as a shithouse rat', with rather a lot of beard and unfortunate hoarding practices so far as dead beasts are concerned.

But this is not the case. Arthur was given a tutor (a great many tutors, actually) as you remember, but it was a tutor who was not Merlin, because Merlin was still a boy in a small village called Ealdor making cracking good sport of his magic, as he was a child, and children do not yet know that Man is the only beast who has learned to fear what is innocent, and pervert it accordingly, and then, having quite thoroughly ruined it, kill it with the worst of their weapons, known even to this day as Justice. So he made rather a lot of cats levitate, and prided himself on a nuanced understanding of when to let loose the elders' belt buckles when they most required their dignity and their trousers.

No, this Merlin is not old, nor does he announce himself as a wizard by spelling his name with a 'y' and going about in distinctly wizard-y robes with a layer of must from his Cottage of Oddities, because already at this point of the story magic has been outlawed; and so his mother forbid the robes, which was rather a great letdown for a boy who has come early to the understanding of how wonderfully authoritative it is to have something flapping after your heels in the rising morning.

But in the case of the boy who was sometimes called Wart (but only rarely, by a governess who may have muddled her astrolabe, but was otherwise lovely), it is true indeed that Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were devoted to Court Hand and Summulae Logicales, and the remainder of the week to Organon, Repetition, and Astrology. This was in the mornings. In the afternoons, the schedule was thus: Mondays and Fridays, tilting and horsemanship; Tuesdays, hawking; Wednesdays; fencing; Thursdays, archery; Saturdays, the theory of chivalry, terminology of the chase and hunting etiquette.

You may have noticed that the boy who was sometimes called Wart (but whom we shall henceforth refer to as 'Arthur', for the sake of concision) had nothing so pedestrian as 'play time' or How To Win Friends and Influence the Castle Dogs (who we are sad to say liked him well enough, but were too caught up in their hunting pursuits to bond overly much with him) earmarked in this programme. This is because the good people of Camelot were not his friends, they were his subjects; they loved him for being handsome, and well turned-out, but it was more the way all humans love anything that is blonde and well-spoken: a brittle sort of love, with a lot of cracks in it. It would not pass muster in a kiln, where anything that is to be hardened in it must first be checked thoroughly for flaws, and accordingly accepted or discarded. When you do not check a human for his defects before updating your status to Besotted, he knows your love will not survive the things that life means for it to pass through, even when he is a boy.

A child, even one who has been raised in a gilded crib, with a servant never farther than his chubby arms breadth, does not really understand why a stranger would bow to him, when he has seen how other boys are treated; when other boys want a strawberry tart, they get their knuckles rapped and are sent to bed; and when he wants a strawberry tart, the cook sends out a scullion to pick strawberries from the densest bit of wood, where noseless Wat lurks in his skins, terrorizing hapless kitchen lads who after all never asked to work in a castle, with a little twat of a prince who wants strawberry tarts like clockwork after his hawking, and never shares them neither. But we hardly need to comprehend why to understand that we are Different. Some children will tell you that Different is bad, but only if they are obnoxious little beasts; and of course there were none of those about, or if there were, they certainly kept their tendencies to beastliness under rein in the presence of this boy whose father controlled their taxes.

And so having everything handed to him, and being constantly reminded of his beauty and wit, and many other nice things besides (we cannot itemize these compliments, firstly because it's rather unnecessary, and secondly because the author has some need of time for those occasional fundamentals of life such as dinner and wanking), Arthur's chivalry slunk out of the whole affair a bit withered, and his Nobility was perhaps a little soured, like milk gone off. But his heart was very large, and a heart can talk any of these attributes back to heel.

We must address another misunderstanding. It has been said by some that he had 'fair hair and a stupid face', but this is not true either. He was a towheaded boy, the way princes should be, with a great lot of eyes underneath his bangs which would have enslaved his mother, and occasionally prompted his father to smile, when he was not remembering that he must be hard on any boy, and harder still on a motherless one, who might whinge about how the other boys, even the poor ones, had mothers, and he had none. He grew into a towheaded youth, with the same great lot of eyes, and muscles beside. And when he was a man, the muscles (and other things) were bigger, and the eyes not quite so great, but they had a knowledge the maidservants (and some of the manservants) interpreted as they wished, though we must note (because he will imply otherwise) that the knowledge was not at all carnal in nature, unless you count a certain familiarity with his left hand which shall remain unmentioned, for the sake of the children.

So it must be understood that he was very handsome when the boy who would be called Emrys met him, because he comes off rather poorly in the whole thing, and the reader mustn't judge the boy who would be called Emrys too harshly for noticing his...forearms. And anyway, the boy who would be called Emrys but at the time was merely Merlin liked girls awfully well, thanks muchly.

It must be supposed that the reader knows their journey was a Perilous and Fraught one, with many dangers, and pretty girls besides. So we shan't linger on that. No one likes to be condescended to. No, the general outline of their story is very well-known indeed, and while there may be some confusion thanks to some surely well-intentioned mucking about in the history books, and at some point we must address that unpleasant bit about Arthur fucking his sister, what must be understood at the outset, for it's not entirely proper, since doubtless you're still rather stuck on the Merlin (that is Merlyn) which you have been led to believe was an old man with spiders in his beard and bird shit all over his shoulders, is that the boy who would be called The Once and Future King and the boy who would be called Emrys loved one another.

Unfortunately we must be explicit, if we wish to clear up this little misconception of the platonic tenderness between tutor and ward.

The boy we are henceforth calling Arthur and the boy we are henceforth calling Merlin (for that is what he will be for a very long time, and to a great many people) loved one another platonically, the way close mates are allowed, with long gazes, and a great many accidental hand grazes which were not accidental at all, if they thought about it; but they also loved one another in the biblical sense, though Arthur in particular, if you were to ask him, would scoff even at the first, and as proof of his indifference have an immediate go at Merlin's intelligence, general hygiene, and effeminate thinness, in that precise order. And the reason for it was this: he did not know he loved Merlin, for a very long time. That is to say, he did not want to know it, because he knew people did not love him, but rather revered him, and that is not the same at all. We do not mean to excuse him; but princes cannot be lonely. They can be insufferable, because the populace expects that of rich men; but the populace does not want to know that his gold has not bought him content, and they do not want to know that his future crown is already too heavy, and no one has told him how better to distribute it.

Anyway, we have laid out the introduction and body, and now for the concluding paragraph: they were both acutely interested in fucking, and they were both acutely interested in the other never knowing it, and in fact they were both acutely interested in never knowing it themselves.

Doubtless you were told that it was Arthur who found his way to Merl(y)in in a forest clearing with a snug cottage and a well, but as you may have already guessed, this was not the case; it was Merlin who went to Arthur, and it was done like this:

Where Arthur never had any mother at all, Merlin had one who was a model for all the rest. She was called Hunith, and she loved her son, unashamedly; it is not particularly necessary to mention much else about her, as she is little present in this story, but it may help in the understanding of the Merlin who came to Camelot full of a lot of notions about humanity, and its loveliness. Arthur was not long in discovering these notions, and he was lenient on them, because we want to believe this sort of faith is naive, and must be killed, so that you are not a fool, which is much worse than being a tyrant; but it is not so: and Arthur, who could be quite wise when he was not preoccupied with the effect of his profile upon the visiting ladies and their heaving bosoms, understood this, and if he could not subscribe to it himself, he cherished it (secretly, snarkily, with a great many 'what a big sodding _girl_ you are, Merlin's to emphasize that he personally would never stand for any such thing) in his manservant.

What happened was that while Hunith would have dearly loved to keep her son to herself, there will always come a time when our children have to leave us, particularly when they are magical children; because as we have already mentioned, magic was then illegal, and while levitating cats and bursting belt buckles are funny to a boy of eight (and even to one of eighteen), they are especially worrisome for a mother. She scolded him, some, while he was growing; but not overly much. Shame is a thing you must keep from your children as long as possible; it should never be the breast at which they nurse. But there is a point where coddling becomes dangerous, and Hunith's light hand had brought them to this point: people were starting to notice.

So Merlin was packed off to a dear friend called Gaius, about whom not much is known; but we do know that when he stopped being the Court Sorcerer of Camelot (on account of the fact that he was not particularly inclined toward getting dead), he became the Court Physician of Camelot, and has evermore nursed all its various sniffles and contusions. It was to him Merlin was headed when he crested his final hill, and saw before him the citadel, nicely dressed with the sun, as though it had carefully puzzled over its morning finery just for this instant. As this was only the start of an Adventure, when everything is still good, and the world is especially pure, because it is full of promise, which can lean one way or another, Merlin was very pleased, and whistled to himself, and probably would have been smiled upon by everyone he passed, if he had come across anyone; but he had not yet reached the populated sections of the lower city, and was still alone in the heather, with the sweet air all about him. In future there will be another Adventure called the Great War, and a grand lot of boys will march off to it full of the airy dreams of youths who will never lose their bones somewhere in a hole of mud and blood, to age without them. And they will be similarly chuffed: you see, the beginning of any story, be it a life or legend, is never the part with the bad bits. That is for Later. Old men, and the wizened little ladies you see about sometimes, with the hair growing out of their chins-they have had Trials, and Tragedy, and they have lost things that are the very worst sorts of things to lose, because you can never get them back. But youths still have spring in them; they are full of all the green bits which were once thought to have taken their final drubbing from bitter December, and have come on again, despite. Young people always think they are going to come on again, despite.

It would be terrible to ruin this moment, and there is such a nice smile on his face. It will be the first thing Arthur notices, though he will not outwardly notice it, but rather inwardly, in the places his father taught him to ignore. So we will say nothing of how the boy who was called Merlin was still very young, hardly twenty, and did not comprehend that he was going to get all the not-so-nice bits of the story the same as he was going to have the lovely ones. If you were to, at the very Beginning, when the Adventure is itself young, and chaste with it, suddenly understand everything that was To Come, you would sit down right on your Path To Destiny (the very first bend, not the one you can see farther on, near the old oak), and cry. And as Merlin never had a father to tell him that crying is a thing to hide away in the same bits where Arthur would first notice Merlin's smile, he was quite prone to all sorts of emotions, and would have sat down and had several of them; and that would have spoiled the mood.

Instead he knew nothing whatsoever about any of the nasty turns which Fate would do him, but rather only that he was coming from a very small village and going to live in a grand castle with the king and his various bejewelled retinue. Now, the citadel of Camelot is not so very unique at all, and if you have seen one castle, it is safe to say you have pretty well seen them all, as murder holes and privies are quite a universal thing, since murder and shitting are quite a universal thing. But the sun had laid its holy touch on that day, and no cloud had come to mar it; there is a grand artistry in sunlight, which puts diamonds on the humblest of huts. It lay now in all the hollows of Camelot, and burst in the peasants' mouths as Merlin made his way through the lower city toward the castle, so that Camelot seemed to him all radiance, though of course there were horse shit and rotten vegetables in the straw the same as anywhere else. Horse shit is not an auspicious start to an Adventure, so we tend to ignore it.

He entered the palace and, addressing himself to a guard, found his way to Gaius' chambers with some dodging of maids and marveling over statues (he had never seen a statue before, unless you count the half-hearted whittlings of his friend Will), whereupon he proceeded to startle the poor man almost fatally, reveal his magic, and put his foot rightly in it in the denying of it, all within the span of perhaps thirty seconds.

"How is it you know magic?" Gaius demanded, and they ran through the entire line of inevitable questions and clumsy refutations till they at last arrived at a conclusion that satisfied them both, which was to say that Merlin explained that he really had no idea how he did any of it, rather it simply happened, and Gaius, who had not remembered his glasses, and could not read the letter Merlin tried to give him as justification for his intrusion, suddenly understood that it was Hunith's boy who stood before him, and that he was not supposed to have arrived till Wednesday. In fact it _was_ Wednesday, but learned men are often not so particularly fussed about things like the concept of time, which is really nothing other than man's hubris: when you have trapped something so ambiguous in your timepieces, it's really a very convenient opportunity to puff up.

"You better put your bag in there," Gaius said, not without kindness, and pointed Merlin to his own little room.

So that was how he came to Camelot, but this is still the gentle bit of the story, where the plot makes some stirrings, and seems inclined to do something, and hasn't yet, not quite, being still in the process of feeling everything out. He still had a Destiny to encounter, in all its proper capital letters; but that would wait till morning.

* * *

Next morning Merlin began his apprenticeship with a sack full of bottles in which were brewed all sorts of concoctions he didn't yet understand. "Hollyhock and Feverfew for Lady Percival, and this is for Sir Olwin. He's as blind as a weevil, so warn him not to take it all at once," Gaius told him, and then with judgemental eyebrows reiterated that the practice of any sorcery would see him executed immediately.

This may seem a bland start; but most beginnings are. And later there will come great tournaments, and lady's favors, and even a dragon, so you needn't worry for long. And of course, he wouldn't have been sent out on such mundane errands if something were not preparing to occur, which it did as he was passing through the drawbridge gate and into the training grounds where sport was being made of a serving boy.

Merlin, as we have already said, was from a very small village, and in other times might have been called something like a bog jumper or a Culchie; he had no experience with serving boys or knights, and did not know how any of them were to behave. At first it seemed like play (and it was, for the knights, and the tall blonde man at their centre); the serving boy was carrying a target, and moving about shakily at the directions of the knights, carrying it this way and that, till one of the knights decided he ought to be taught a lesson, as most poor people should have in the presence of their financial betters. "Teach him a lesson. Go on, boy," Knight #1 (who shall have no proper designation because he never is seen again, and also he's a bit of a wanker) said, and the blonde boy said, "This'll teach him." The blonde boy was egged on by laughter too great for the occasion, but as you have already suspected, he was Arthur, and princes do not have to be funny at all to be handed an ovation, whereas you might stay up all night working on a bit, and be hissed off the stage.

Now the blonde boy who was Arthur began to hurl daggers at the target, whilst the serving boy yelped and leapt that way and this, and the knights howled and Arthur called out, "Don't stop! Come on, run!"

As we have said, Merlin was not exactly overly familiar with the working relationship between knights and their servants, but the boy was clearly upset, and he did know that wouldn't do.

He was still, however, in the first grips of his Adventure; and if some of the gloss had worn off, the entire affair was still overall scintillating, so that when the boy at last dropped the target, and it rolled across the cobblestones toward Merlin, making a great racket, he put his foot on top of it, and announced, with a perfectly genuine smile, "Hey, come on, that's enough."

The blonde boy (who in Merlin's eyes of course would not have been a boy, but a man just the same as he, but, oh, _oh_ -how very young they both were, in this moment) elected at last to notice him. "What?" he asked, without yet any warning in his voice.

"You've had your fun, my friend."

It is necessary to describe to you what Arthur saw, so that later, when it is the part of the story that bears Poor Tidings, and many other ill things, you can understand why it is that he keeps a tally of all the days during which Merlin's smile is a thing that's missing from his life. We will not muddle about with the old cliches of smiles which light entire rooms, but only say that some people involve their lips when they smile, and others their entire being. It must be remembered that Arthur had spent his life surrounded by musty old men and their politics, that probably no one had ever loved him in a non-dutiful way, because there was some tie of blood or royal hierarchy that demanded it of them, and that we can therefore safely extrapolate that it may well have been his first time seeing such a smile. Merlin was a handsome lad (for a peasant, Arthur might have grudgingly admitted) regardless, with black hair, and sonnet blue eyes, though his ears did stick out a bit, and at some angles might have been dangerous in high winds; but then, at some angles, when he was laughing, Arthur looked a bit like a horse, which no one other than Merlin was allowed to tell him.

There was a moment where they were both smiling at one another, somewhat out of touch with the current mood. "Do I know you?" Arthur asked.

"Er, I'm Merlin." (It was a good job he had the smile, as articulating properly in the matter of first impressions was not his strong suit.) He held out his hand, like a man who has lived all his life in a little village populated by geese and the requisite cow.

"So I don't know you."

"No."

"Yet you called me…'friend'."

"That was my mistake," Merlin admitted. They were still smiling. It would probably have been embarrassingly obvious to someone of modern notions that they were flirting (though they themselves did not notice it), but the knights had little experience with the concept of men loving other men, outside the homosocial bonding of army campaigns, which no one talked about afterward, because you couldn't exactly be held responsible for there being no women around, whilst sleeping on a cold ground to boot.

This went on till Merlin admitted that he'd never had a friend who could be such an ass, and Arthur that he'd never had one who could be so stupid, and it progressed from that point to Merlin attempting a punch that would have been quite pathetic had he landed it, since he had never really punched anyone before; but of course he didn't land it, on account of Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, so that the whole thing ended with a lesson about the unpleasant bits of Adventures where not everyone you meet is lovely, and might in fact be quite a prat. And this one was a noble prat (the noblest of them, in fact), which meant that he was going to jail.

We shall not linger on Gaius' fatherly lecture, since it would be impossible for anyone to be pleased over the fact that they'd had an apprentice for a single day, and already that apprentice had shirked their chores by getting themselves imprisoned; therefore it would be quite condescending of us to explain that Gaius was upset. What is necessary to know is that in exchange for an early release, Merlin was to be put in the stocks, which was the kindest of medieval punishments. In those muddled middle parts of our history, there were all sorts of devices for the chastisement of sinners, blasphemers, and adulterers, and though Merlin was none of those, he had committed the indecency of poverty, and therefore anything whatsoever could be done to him. Now, since it is unknown precisely when Arthur of Camelot ruled, we cannot confirm for sure exactly which devices were on hand at the time; but if you have resided snugly beneath a rock, and it has passed your notice what horrors men do to one another, the following list may help you to picture how our ancestors comported themselves when the conundrum of how to level up their flogging was upon them. There was the Brazen Bull, the Scold's Bridle, Rack, Chair of Torture, the Pear of Anguish, the Breast Ripper, and so on and so forth. These may not have all been available at the time of which we speak, but there have always been implements of the especial design to be inserted into unwilling flesh, and beasts to be made into the unwitting accomplices of quartering. It would be agreeable to tell ourselves that we have evolved as a race, and progress, in whipping on our science, our languages, our religions, has touched up our morals as well. But this is not the case. It is only that humans have discovered prettier words for their atrocities.

But there was something significant about the incident, and it was this: it was while Camelot was lobbing tomatoes into his face that he met Guinevere, whom you will recognize immediately, but not in this incarnation, for she is a lovely dark girl, and history and America have told us they ought not to be cast as the fair maiden.

This Guinevere was called Gwen, and had no guile in her; in fact she was a lovely thing, but in social situations was clumsy as a scullion who has been at the master's good ale, and in the simple course of this introduction managed to imply a certain weediness and then in trying to correct stumbled over Arthur's roughness, and his toughness, and quite thoroughly implied that Merlin was wonderfully brave in relation to his muscles (or lack thereof), but would not be riding off with his sword between his teeth anytime soon, and would have to stay home with the ladies.

But they parted as friends, which is all you need know for the moment.

* * *

There were a great many Events beside these, of course. But we have got to lay the foundation between our title characters, so that you may see why Fate had chosen them, even though it surely found them a bit wanting in the beginning, between the one's skinniness, and the other's prattishness.

It was in the lower town shortly after the stocks that Merlin once more encountered Arthur and his entourage. In the first encounter, Arthur had inquired whether or not Merlin knew how to walk on his knees, in the not remotely erotic sense, so you may disabuse yourself of any innuendo, since Arthur had not warmed to the smile immediately, and in fact had been thinking at that moment of bosoms. He said now, "How's your knee-walking coming along?" and Merlin attempted to ignore him, as our mothers have all told us to deal with bullies. But as must be fairly self-explanatory, seeing as his first day in Camelot, he had carried out only ¾ of his errands because he had had his hands full quarreling with the prince and afterward touring the dungeons, Merlin was not a particularly obedient boy. He reiterated that Arthur was an ass, but was polite enough to acknowledge that he was a royal one. There was another exchange with no homoerotic undertones to it, during which Arthur said, "I could take you apart with one blow," and Merlin responded, "I could take you apart with less than that."

And it went on in that vein for some time, till at last the following had been established:

 **-** That Merlin had committed a grave error in so casually addressing a rich man

 **-** That Arthur was a prat

 **-** That they would need to enter combat over the matter, possibly to the death

"Come on, then. I warn you, I've been trained to kill since birth," Arthur said, and this was true in the most literal of senses, as his mother Ygrayne died bringing him forth, and no one who loved her has ever quite forgiven him since.

There was then a lot of whipping about of maces, on Arthur's part, a lot of dodging on Merlin's, and eventually the realisation that if Arthur were so inclined (and he seemed to be so inclined), Merlin would die, possibly horribly. So because he didn't want that to happen less than a week into his first Adventure, he ignored the little Gaius voice in the back of his head which kept reminding him of the dire consequences the use of any magic would invoke, and began to cheat. Which in all fairness we should not really call cheating, since when a man is trying to kill you, you ought to try and kill him right back, with whatever advantage you can press. In rapid succession, Arthur's mace swings were frustrated by a lot of dangling hooks as they advanced into the marketplace, and then his shin barked by a box that suddenly sprang without so much as a thoughtful "On your left!" into his current murder trajectory. A rope tripped him of its own accord. Merlin asked him if he wanted to give up. (You can guess the answer.) There was afterward a convenient bucket for Arthur to trip over, and then: the sudden cusp of victory, which Merlin savored till the sight of Gaius disapproving at him from the crowd that had gathered distracted him long enough for Arthur to rise with a broom in his hand and beat the ever-loving piss out of him.

It would have been Merlin's second arrest in as many days, if Arthur had not interfered on his behalf, because Merlin was certainly an idiot (we can hardly argue that at this particular moment, though we would like to), but a brave one, and a man who possesses equal parts stupidity and bravery is always in high demand by those who in future must lead an army of equal parts stupidity and bravery against its frothing foes.

Now, we must tidy up another matter before we explain how it was that Merlin and Arthur came to be so inseparable that in any iteration of their story, be it somewhat muddled in the details or no, one name is never mentioned without there being some awareness of the other's presence lurking about somewhere, waiting for his own piece to be told. This was a very small thing, seemingly, in the beginning, and so we did not mention it; but we did promise you a dragon. There had been a certain interruption in Merlin's sleep which might happen to any of us, for who knows what walks in such enchanted woodlands, where your unconscious mind may paint the sky in any palette it likes, and dress in glib mists the features of any you have so loved. The interruption was this: a voice had been calling his name in the night, a slithery sort of thing that did not seem exactly human, if Merlin were to think about it, which he did not want to do three hours before he was supposed to rise, and which he especially did not want to do at all, because it is hardly comforting that the disembodied voice in your head should in any way suggest that it doesn't even share a species with you. But eventually the voice could not be denied, if he wanted to go back to sleep; and so that night he crept out of his room, and descended into the dungeons, where he was obliged to distract the guards by upsetting their dice; and from there, with nothing but a torch in his hand, he headed farther and farther down the tunnel stairway, into the bowels of the citadel, which could be, if we are enough pressed for time to be lazy with our description (we are not; we are simple lazy) summed up thusly: it was a cave. It was a very ordinary cave, in fact, if it is ordinary for caves to be found beneath castles, and if it is still ordinary if they are home to a talking dragon.

"Merlin!" the dragon called, and like a gobshite he turned about looking for the source of the voice. The dragon spiraled down to perch on a convenient rock, its chains jangling. "How small you are for such a great destiny."

Merlin had never heard anything about any such destiny, and he was still rather put off by having been woken up three hours before his chores, and being now too awake to even bother going back to bed; as such, we are sorry to say he was not particularly receptive when the dragon explained to him that his magic had been given to him purposefully for the fulfilling of this Destiny, which involved Arthur, who as it turned out was The Once and Future King and would apparently go on to unite the land of Albion. This seemed quite impossible to Merlin, who explained that the dragon had the wrong Arthur, as this one was an idiot; and at any rate, whether or not it was the right Arthur, all and sundry were welcome to him, and terribly grieved to inform you that he would not be thwarting them, and in fact might be persuaded to help them. He was not interested in a Destiny-most especially, not any Destiny that involved the esteemed Prince Knob.

"Well, tough shit," said the dragon, only a bit more politely, because he had a certain regal mien to maintain.

And so the matter was closed.

* * *

Now, Uther had quite a lot of magical enemies, since people do not like to be banned, and it befell (again) that one such enemy had bamboozled their way into the court in the disguise of a lady who was actually welcome. She was to sing at a feast at which all the important personages (so far as this story is concerned, at least) were present, and at which Arthur made eyes at the King's ward, who was called Morgana, but whom you know as Morgan le Fey (and who was in reality the relation of Arthur, not the Queen Morgause), so although we can assure you he did not accidentally fuck his sister, it is quite possible he _would_ have accidentally fucked his sister, given the chance. Which we cannot entirely condemn, since she had long black hair and perfect skin, and a lovely Dublin accent besides.

There were a great many servants running about depositing sugared almonds and butter and changing out the last courses with steaming pottages, roasted peacock, tench, and that amicable Wensleydale cheese which pairs so agreeably with anything that can be considered by sane men a companion to dairy products; and a lot of other fragrant treats unto infinity, it probably seemed to Merlin, who had attended as well. He exchanged overtly bitchy looks with Arthur, still smarting over his conversation with the dragon. But there was Gwen beside him, and that nearly made Arthur's face bearable, though it would have been more bearable still if it weren't poor etiquette for him to divest it of the smirk.

What happened was this: the woman sang. And the shadows lengthened and the people sagged in their chairs and slowly their lids drooped, and the cobwebs spun about them like the fogs of very early morning, when everything which has slept must live again, reluctantly. They were not all of them creamy, and golden-haired, but they slept like princesses nevertheless, all except Merlin, who had covered his ears, and left himself open to saving the prince from a dagger that would have pierced his heart if Merlin hadn't forgotten to stand idly by, whistling with his hands in his pockets.

Uther was thrilled. While we shan't excuse him, he did love his son, he just did not know how to reasonably show it, or how to calm his tits when he had gone off and shown it, and just let his son bask in the knowledge that his father loved him, which was a perfectly fine thing for children to understand, even when they were grown. So he thought the occasion called for something very special. Merlin did not want a reward, until Uther insisted; and then it would have been rude to refuse him. Besides, he had not yet had anything to eat, and he was hoping the reward might have been some bequeathing from the festivities, such as all of the fried fig pastries, which could be stored in his room, and drawn out for weeks.

"This merits something quite special," Uther said, and Merlin scuffed his toe modestly, whilst Arthur practised the perfect amount of gratitude to bestow upon a peasant. "You shall be rewarded a position in the royal household. You shall be Prince Arthur's manservant."

And it befell that Merlin came to work in service to the prince, and Arthur stormed off in a fit of pique.

* * *

As you may well imagine, a lot of work goes into keeping a prince and his environs presentable. There was bed making, armor-polishing, floor-scrubbing; tapestry washing, cloak beating, belt mending; sword whetting, tunic mending, foot rubbing, and dinner fetching. There was also the general dusting, the airing of the rooms, and on Wednesdays the bed covers had to be boiled; there was the holding of the royal spoon, when the royal hand had to peruse pressing documents, and could not be bothered with basic motor skills. There were speech transcriptions, once Arthur discovered that Merlin was a literate unwashed mass; there was the drawing of the royal bath, which involved several trips to the well, and several more besides when Arthur was not satisfied with the clarity and temperature of his bathwater (he never was). On Tuesdays it was inescapably necessary for one's manservant to aid in his master's training by wobbling about disastrously with a shield, taking blows. On Thursdays he had to trail along at a deferential but useful distance while Arthur shot down whatever hapless game stumbled into his path, and then go about gathering the twitching little bodies into a sack. There was besides all this legging darning, and the sniffing of ceremonial tunics, to determine whether having been shut up for untold months had rendered them unfit for human companionship (it had); there was fire stoking, table repair, and helm polishing. Some of these were indeed routine duties; and some of them were merely because Arthur was a tosser.

In the beginning when it was a vast understatement to say that Arthur did not like Merlin, there was no spoon holding or foot rubbing or tapestry washing, and as training was his respite from his chambers where Merlin was always now puttering about, there was certainly no wobbling about disastrously with a shield. And then one morning when Merlin was adjusting his collar, Arthur asked, "How do I look?" just to make it necessary that Merlin should acknowledge he was splendidly blonde, and handsome, and dressed in a clean tunic that someone else had put on for him, while Merlin's was patched, and dusty, and self-regulating. And Merlin said to him, neither missing a beat, nor leaving off the collar, "Like an immense plonker, my Lord."

Of course the people were not allowed to address him this way; and they had never dared to. So it was with a strange feeling in his stomach that he absorbed the insult, and wondered if this might not be what it felt like when one had a friend, who could address him any way he pleased, and did not mind pointing out his flaws, because it was generally accepted that this friend had seen these flaws, and loved him anyway.

Sometimes we do not know how to be a friend not because we are base, or wicked, but because someone well-meaning has tried to beat the inclination out of us, thinking that they know our paths, and the people who populate them, and they fear our soft hearts, and the wrongs they may do us when we love unabashedly. This is not to excuse Arthur, but only to try and understand him a little better, which is the most any of us can ask.

After this, the spoon holding was added, and the foot rubbing, and the shield-bearing; firstly because Merlin had committed the grave sin of forcing Arthur to like him (just a bit), which Arthur considered meritorious of punishment, and afterward because he wanted an excuse to have Merlin about as often as possible. He sacked Merlin once, owing to a misunderstanding over a man with an enchanted shield, and threatened it daily; but neither of them took this seriously, though Merlin really was quite a terrible servant, being clumsy, impertinent, and prone to making a total cock-up of his trouser mendings, so that Arthur eventually had to pass off even the most minor of needlework to the seamstress.

They quarrelled like a married couple that does not mean it, hurling a lot of silly insults (and boots) at one another that, like untrue shafts, quiver for a moment in the straw matting, and then fall away, if they have even found the target at all. They did not throw anything that would stick or fester.

Arthur was no less arrogant; but Merlin had now observed him in numerous interactions with the people of Camelot, who felt comfortable bringing to Arthur the petitions they dare not present to the king, and he would labor over the smallest of complaints till he found a satisfactory outcome, sometimes on the sly, because his father would not have approved; and it befell that sometimes when Merlin looked at Arthur now, he felt a swell of pride, the way one gets when their child has done something particularly admirable.

They could now be found most days on the training grounds with their heads together, bantering about the more odious of the nobleman which Arthur had no choice but to knight, whilst Merlin fiddled round his armor with such scrutiny to each strap that Gaius accused him of enjoying himself.

You may have heard from another Merlyn who was, if not exactly accurate, at least wise nonetheless, that the best thing for being sad is to learn. This is true. Arthur had learned it when he was a young boy who could not yet be taught the matters of state, and was therefore useless, and must be applied to his swordsmanship till he made something of himself. So it was that when he had been let down by someone he loved the way Uther had told him not to love, since it is only bound to end in disappointment, he could be found at table in his chambers, hunched over something he had taken out of the library. We must suppose that perhaps he thought he could read himself to someone more worthy; for an educated man is at least valuable, and that can sometimes be translated into something like affection, though it be an empty one, which dries up soon as the man has ceased to live for his adherents. It was on these evenings that Merlin knew to stoke the fire quietly, and turn back the skins on the bed, and keep Arthur's flagon topped up, till Arthur had sighed and sat back and pressed his fingers to his temples. He would then put all the rawness of him into a confession he would only tell Merlin. He would not have called it this; he would have said it was only like talking to an empty room, since Merlin's head had the same echoing quality. And then Merlin would say, "You'd know all about that echoing, wouldn't you?" and bash the dinner plate with his elbow, and they would squabble, and it would end with Arthur putting his hand on Merlin's shoulder, because he did not know how to say thank you.

But these were only moments that anyone might have when it had been suddenly found out that they were not so very different from an enemy after all.

They took Arthur's favourite goshawk Cully out into the woods and spent a dismal evening trying to call him down out of a tree when he got it into his head to be ornery. Merlin was inclined to let the stupid bird be that way, and good riddance; but Arthur had made friends with all the castle animals in lieu of the lot of bum lickers who knew he was a prince and little else, and wouldn't leave him, and overall was so despondent that Merlin prompted the bird down with a burst of magic when Arthur had ducked out to look for a long stick or anything else which might persuade a half-mad goshawk to come off it.

They began to get into larks, which bond any boys, even the grown ones.

Merlin had a separate chamber in Gaius' rooms, as we have already mentioned, and on most nights slept there on his own pallet; but when Arthur was sick it was required that he drag his bed clothes into Arthur's room and sleep on the floor, so that he could attend to the prince's every feverish need, and stoke or damp the fire as his illness demanded. He spooned broth into his chapped mouth and smacked the pillows back to plumpness and sponged the sweat off his brow. He often caught whatever it was Arthur had got, and then Arthur had to contrive multiple reasons why he should be in and out of a sick manservant's room, when a sick manservant was an unproductive one, and therefore beneath notice. He rode out early in the mornings to pick lavender to soothe Merlin's sleep; but this was only, as he explained to Merlin, because his armor was in an even worse state than usual, which he had not thought possible, considering how poor was Merlin's upkeep of it. And anyway, he couldn't be expected to draw his _own_ baths, could he?

He left presents for Merlin which he denied; he hadn't any earthly clue why it should be that books Merlin had exclaimed over in the market afterward mysteriously materialized on Gaius' worktable; he was prepared, graciously, to overlook how Merlin, who was paid room and board, might have got hold of these various trinkets.

Gaius had nursed the prince since his tragic beginnings, when Uther could not look at him, for there was much of Ygrayne in his brow; he knew there was kindness and sorrow in the boy, in at least equal measure. He knew the dragon had foretold a great Destiny and the boy Merlin who had become like a son, and the boy Arthur who had started like a son were bound for terrible things, because that is what a great Destiny really means. There is always a lot of bother about noble deeds and clamorous battles, and if one has not got through to the other side with all his bits, at least he has had a song or poem about him, and can consider it all worth the nuisance. But these boys would have to give up pieces of themselves, and that is by far a rougher parting than any sweet separation of new love. They would perhaps have to give up each other, which Gaius was beginning to understand (and they were not) would be worst of all.

But none of this had yet come to pass. In fact, we can say that though there were feasts, and tournaments, and the occasional embittered sorcerer/cess to try their hand at Arthur's young life, their days were in fact mostly mundane. It did not seem that way to them, because if either were idle, or bored, he would seek out the other (with a proper excuse, of course) and take to the woods, or the stables, where Arthur tried unsuccessfully to improve Merlin's abysmal horsemanship. These lessons were fruitless, but Arthur would discover in the giving of them that one could laugh themselves to sobbing, which he had never known before.

He took Merlin along on every hunt and patrol, though it was not quite the done thing. His knights learned not to question this, and to cover for Merlin's lumbering attempts at sword fighting, so that bandits could not claim at least one pitiful victim, as it was by this time generally known that the prince would find it rather disappointing.

They passed a long winter together, when the old snows of England lay like a good cake frosting over the lands, entertaining themselves with games of chess at which Merlin found it necessary to cheat, so that Arthur had at least a taste of humbleness, which would have done him a world of good in larger doses, but those were rather harder to get down. He did it in precisely the way Gaius had warned him against, using his magic casually, first to bash about something deeper in Arthur's chambers, so that Arthur whipped his head about, saying, "What was that?", and then to move the pieces precisely where he wanted them, so that when Arthur turned back, he had suddenly a whole new board to contemplate, and one which was distinctly to Merlin's advantage, at that. "Was the board always like this?" he asked, puckering up his brow.

"Yeah," Merlin would always tell him, with just the right amount of disbelieving innocence in his voice. "Do you think I switched everything about in the few seconds you were looking away?" At which point Arthur would glare very steadily at him, not entirely convinced that this wasn't _precisely_ what had happened (though of course he still did not know about the magic), because it was unthinkable that _Merlin_ of all people could be leading him in a game of strategy.

It could possibly be argued that they were only making the best of a poor situation, that if they were to be stuck together, they might as well feel out the tolerable bits of each other, so as to make their time some shade of bearable...if one were to entirely discount that Merlin had already risked his life three times for Arthur, though he only half-believed the dragon's prophecy, and if one were besides that to ignore that Arthur had made himself very clever at discovering reasons as to why he should always be touching Merlin. There was always a necessity for tousling his hair, touching his shoulder, putting an arm round him, grinding the washing rag into his face, etc. He did not know that one could simply embrace someone for whatever reason he liked, because it is a human thing to touch and be touched. It is in fact one of the great tragedies of this story that he did not know it; for you can only imagine how often the boy who used to be called Wart must have had to learn and relearn this; love is always a thing that goes out like a lion.

Anyway, it could still possibly be argued, if one were deaf and blind. But the argument falls decisively to pieces when we point out that there were plural occasions on which Arthur and Merlin took poison for the other, which is hardly a thing one does for their casual Sunday mate.

The first incident involved the sorceress Nimueh, who used her sweet maiden's face of soft and gentle bloom to convince Merlin he should accuse a visiting lord of treason. This went over exactly as well as you might think a servant brassly telling off a nobleman for poisoning the prince's chalice might go over: that is to say, Arthur had to step in for him and reassure the King that Merlin was simply an idiot who had doubtless been dropped on his head at birth, with lingering consequences. Merlin insisted, because sometimes he could really be rather thick, and because it was Arthur's life; and he couldn't be dissuaded by minor things like the King's displeasure.

There was one way to test the word of a servant against a nobleman, and that was to have the servant drink the alleged poison, so that at least there would be no loss if the servant's word were true; the nobleman could then be justly executed, and the servant replaced, without any fuss. There were always gads of them running about, after all.

Poor Arthur we are sorry to say was quite terrified. Because Merlin was an idiot did not always mean he was _wrong_. "Merlin, apologise. This is a mistake. I'll drink it," he said, putting out his hand for the goblet.

Neither of them could take the risk that the other should drink it, and leave them. But Merlin was the one holding it, and so he tossed it back, quickly, before Arthur could overpower him and take it. There was a dramatic moment when all seemed well, and Arthur let out his breath and allowed his eyes to half-close.

And then Merlin collapsed.

The King ran for his sword; Arthur ran for Merlin.

It was a close thing. It befell that Arthur had to disobey his father, and embark on a Quest. The first was nearly impossible; the second merely a thing he expected to do, as a noble and handsome prince. But he was less afraid of losing his father's regard than of losing Merlin; the first was quite a foregone conclusion, the second a thing he had never contemplated, though Merlin was mortal, and fallible, and all men must one day lay down their bones' earthly woes.

It is not particularly necessary to state that he was successful; for he lived, and if he had failed, it would have been only because he had perished in the attempt.

The second incident involved the murder of a unicorn. Now, as you know, unicorns are pure and wondrous creatures, and this is why they seek out the snowy laps of maidens untouched to take their repast; no one wants to lay anything in the lap of some sweaty knight, chafing under his armor. And this was what Merlin saw during one of their usual hunts: a great glowing beast which might have been garbed in pearl, or those flowing cumulus layers of a day when God and Zephyros have conspired to usher in a spring without fault.

Arthur saw only a quarry.

He shot it down cleanly, so that it did not suffer; but he was not sorry to see the coat suddenly dim, and the eyes to frost. He saw the horn he could give his father as a token of his worthiness, so that Uther would know he had raised a fine and manly son.

Merlin did not have to be fine or manly, and held its face whilst he cried into the shimmering mane. "Why did you have to kill it?" he asked, because he had felt something tangible go out of the world when it died, and he did not understand how it should have been Arthur who did that.

"Oh, relax, Merlin," Arthur replied. "And mind your skirts."

But it was Arthur who should have minded his skirts (we understand we have muddled the metaphor a bit, but bear with us anyway), for the unicorn's death set into motion a curse that withered the fields and rotted the castle's stores, and put Merlin off talking to him for a whole day.

Merlin was not gentle in telling Arthur that it was his hand which had now brought Camelot to ruin; but he nearly took it back when he saw Arthur's face. Arthur was sometimes cruel, and dismissive; and he never shared his dessert with Merlin till Merlin had been made to carry out some ridiculous chore that kept him another two hours in Arthur's chambers, shining the headboard of his bed or polishing up his boots with the linen he used to rub down his teeth. So he was certainly no innocent, especially as Merlin had gone through half a dozen of his tooth linens in this way. But he loved Camelot the way a knight loves a lady (if they are part of an epic, that is, and not a political match), and when he asked, "Do you really think I caused this curse?", there was a catch in his voice that might have broken apart into tears, if Uther had not forbidden him to indulge in that sort of woman's folly.

And so there was another Quest to lift the curse, and a labyrinth, and a choice. The choice was this: either he could drink to his country's health, and his death, or Merlin could.

Arthur did not know much about death, having never tried it before, but he did know it was not worse than being alive in a world in which Merlin was not. Not that he had any special regard for Merlin, who was an idiot, mind you. It was only his great nobility of spirit that took down the poison without regrets, and it was only his great nobility of spirit that kept him from another comment about Merlin's skirts when he came round some time later to find that after all the poison had been only a sleeping draught, and Merlin, not entirely convinced of this, was still mourning on his neck, like a big quivering girl.

"Merlin. Get the hell off me," he said, so that there would be no misconceptions about his feelings on the subject of manservants embracing their masters. It was not the done thing, and anyway he was in full chain mail, with the sun beating full upon him, so if Merlin wanted to have hysterics, he ought to have the common decency to do it elsewhere, to someone in a light tunic, with the sea breeze deft in his hair.

* * *

Between griffins, black knights, plagues, unicorns, bandits, and an assortment of more minor ailments, they passed their first year together. Merlin knew the date precisely, and had decided he would be nice to Arthur in honour of it. In order to do this, for one day only he would excise the following words from his vocabulary: prat, prig, prick, lout, dunderhead, clotpole, booby, knob, tit, dollophead, git, twat, wanker, muppet, Gael. He thought this quite generous of himself, since Arthur could be all of these, often simultaneously.

He threw open the windows of Arthur's chamber and strewed about violets and cowslips with what he considered commendable virtuosity, beat the tournament dust from Arthur's pillows, washed the cupboards, fixed the loose arm on Arthur's chair, and when Arthur himself returned from a knighting, looked up with a smile from his floor-scrubbing. "Arthur!" he said, as if he were an unexpected delight. He did not comment on the fact that Arthur had just selfishly tracked mud through the last hour of his labours, showing no consideration for his poor beleaguered servant, as was his habit. He also did not make fun of the expression on Arthur's face, which was rather stupid.

It was not stupid. Or, at least, it was not indicative of a lack of activity between his ears, for in fact it was all turning over quite rapidly; he was not gormless in that moment, but confused. He had in fact watched the date quite carefully, and knew to the day (and perhaps the hour; he had devoted a very stormy journal entry to it) when it was that Merlin had joined his service. Merlin was almost a friend, for a peasant. Arthur had therefore planned A Little Something, the details of which he needed to finalise, so that Merlin would think it all quite coincidental, because Camelot's crown prince could hardly be expected to burn so much as a single candle down to the last of its wick, let alone three, breaking his head over an outing with the same nincompoop he was cursed to trail about for all his terrestrial days.

So it was not that he did not understand the smile, or the herbs, or the sloshing about of the soapy water, without so much as a tiny, kitten-sized mew of complaint, though Merlin had got the soap in his eyes twice, since Arthur had entered the room. It was that he knew precisely why Merlin had not snapped, "Oi! All over my clean floor, you plonker?" His birthdays Uther remembered, because they were to be feted, and it is always easy to remember an occasion for which the entire goal is to be irresponsible about your cake consumption. But there are always numerous other little achievements of a growing boy; to be born is not an achievement at all. His mother had done all the work for that, and finding it anticlimactic after such a lot of fuss, slipped away before he could be a disappointment to her as well. He had struck true his first quintain alone, though a whole cortege of nobles had applauded politely, and made him trite tribute. He had unseated his first opponent similarly, and commanded his first hawk, and recited his first Latin; he had been experiencing these things for the first time with all the joy of a child who has taken something new into himself, but they had only been things he was expected to do, the least he could achieve before the public, so that his father did not bear the humiliation of a weak and pitiful son, who could not out-joust a professional man twice his age and weight. He did not think it was the done thing, to mark little incidences like friendship. He had thought, not through any failing in Merlin, but through a failing in himself, that he would remark the day alone.

He will have his heart broken many times, Arthur Pendragon. But this was the first, and it was the cleanest break. Sometimes a heartbreak is only a little moulting, so that it may grow something fresher in the place where the old and dead bits of tired griefs have sloughed off their weary hurts.

He struggled for a moment. He was wrestling an Emotion (he was allowed only one at a time). He said to Merlin, "What in hell have you done here?"

"What?" Merlin asked, wilting.

"This is terrible. You've missed the entire corner, there." He pointed to indicate it. "And you've left _boot prints_ all over the bits you did manage to not entirely muff up."

"Those are _yours_ , Arthur Pendragon, you-"

"Well, come on," Arthur interrupted him. "I'll have to bring in someone else entirely to finish this. I'm sure the rest of the servants have nothing better to do than clean up after your rubbish attempts at competence."

For a moment Merlin thought about striking dead (or at least severely poxed) the bit of him in which Arthur took the most pride. He was at least halfway through an incantation for itching when he realised he was to be let off, before he had completed his chores, and moreover, that Arthur had used his Merlin May Well Be an Idiot But He's _My_ Idiot voice.

He smiled. Arthur did not; he made a fake stern face, which was abysmal. Merlin informed him he looked a right arse, forgetting his list (though to be fair he had not included 'arse' on it); Arthur put him under his arm, and dug his knuckles into Merlin's scalp till he found a better description for the handsomest face in all the land. They made off with their usual horses, in the direction of a glade Arthur had discovered earlier, where the black alders slept like children, bestirred not by common winds, and the spring streams chattered their choral melancholy. Well, they did not make in that direction, mind you; it was only that Arthur's horse had got its head away from him, and had a dash at the sweet clover where the alder's shades had brought it shyly into bud. That had not happened in years, owing to his superior horsemanship; but we all have our off days, and the horse, naturally, had taken advantage of his.

It must next be understood that the provisions in his saddlebags were only the preparations of a seasoned huntsmen, who knew he could be caught out in any weather, and how terribly mortifying it would be to die for a lack of cheese. This was certainly not anything like a picnic. If he had saved some of the brie tarts cook had made (not at his special request, of course; there had been a banquet), that was not because Merlin loved them, but rather because Merlin loved them, and Arthur would have to hear about it for all his remaining days if he had not got any.

They flicked bread crumbs at one another and tried to duck one another in the stream whilst washing their hands and afterward laid side by side in the grass, their knees touching.

It is precisely beside a stream, with one's belly full of good wine, and cheese, and the sweet scalding of gingered brie that secrets are divulged. The plants almost seemed to encourage it in all the whispered professions of their secret movements; and a horse's lips are always sealed, unless he has been drinking.

Arthur had several. He told them to Merlin as they came to him. He was not sure he could lead the people. He did not believe his father was incontrovertible. Someday he would have to make great decisions, and as he was a man, and imperfect, he would sometimes choose incorrectly, and someone would have to lay their son into the arms of immortal earth.

It was assumed by Arthur that Merlin had no secrets; or if he had, they were the small discretions of flustered patients, who had come to him about a private genitalia matter. Of course this was not true; but he can be forgiven for assuming it. He did not know about the Destiny; he knew only that Merlin was a peasant who had had to worry about eating, and now he was a peasant who had to worry about his master's orderliness. It might be that he had some sexual fancies that did not need to be aired, but he did not have the leisure hours for real secrets.

Merlin thought, with his knee touching Arthur's, that he should tell him about the magic. He had thought this many times. He had sometimes not slept, for thinking about it. It felt small and ignoble, to lie here in the grass hearing all the things that people cannot give easily, because they have had to unearth it, and what a tender thing that is, to bring squirming into the light.

But perhaps we are all of us afraid deep down that we have given more than anyone can reciprocate. And worse than this: if he told Arthur, Arthur would then have to betray Merlin, or to betray Uther.

So he let Arthur undress the bits of himself that were most frail, and prone to ridicule; and he said nothing.

But there was an Event (there were several, of course, but this was a special one).

There came a warm day in deep summer when Hunith walked into Camelot with blackened face, and clung to her son, and cried, and told him she had come to beg the King's mercy against merciless bandits.

No mere serving boy could broker an audience with the King; but Arthur arranged one immediately.

Uther did not hear her out unkindly; it would be too simple, and too dismissive of all the things in every man to pretend that he was broadly cruel, without nuance. There is neither hero nor villain who has everything of something, and nothing of anything else. But he could not risk his people for a village that was not under his fist; they would have to starve. So does a ruler thrown down his proclamation from indifferent Annwn.

Merlin afterward stood on the battlements with Arthur, who crossed his arms and looked out over his lands. ""I wish we could help everyone, regardless of how far they lived from Camelot," he said quietly, with the sort of sincerity that kept Merlin from drowning him in his bathwater.

"I know you do," Merlin said, and they had a moment of silent camaraderie. It could not last long, as the light was dying, and Ealdor a long ride. It was not at all disputed that he should unshoulder the yoke of his service, and return with his mother; Arthur was perfectly understanding, until it befell that Merlin suggested it might be forever. He looked at Merlin. He pursed his lips. He said, "Of course; I'd do the same." He clapped Merlin on the back and informed him there never was a worst servant in all the lands, and wished him luck.

There had already formed in his head, before he had finished patting Merlin on the shoulder, the way mates do, the germ of a plan; it would hardly do to send _Merlin_ off to fight outlaws, even with the whole of Camelot's arsenal at his disposal. It was certainly possible Arthur might carry it off, but Merlin could only be trusted to trip over his own sword, and render moot any murderous halberd. He did not yet know Merlin was not alone, being accompanied by Gwen and the ward Morgana, who owed him their own debts, and loved him besides; but Arthur would not have really counted them anyway, seeing as they were girls. (Though he would not have said this to Morgana.)

And so the sad contingent rode off to its inevitable doom, with Arthur following at a stealthy distance, once he had amassed his own supplies, and practised his princely apathy. ("Don't be stupid, Merlin; I can hardly let some random bandit kill you when it's my sole right, after everything I've had to endure" had been decided upon as his opening line.)

Despite his best efforts, it was apparent to everyone and their mum (well, Merlin's mum) that Arthur was not after the glory of rich men and their conquests, and that while he might well have cared about the plight of a small village he had never known, he had a personal interest in the entire matter.

It was apparent to Merlin as well, who had long since accepted that they were friends who did all the normal dramatic sacrificial things for one another.

But not everyone is glad to see a prince; not everyone has lived under a good one, or known them as more than their gauntlet. We have mentioned him before, in connection with whittling; he was a man called Will, who had run with Merlin in his youth, and knew what Arthur did not.

"You're his _servant_ , Merlin," he said with special bitterness. "If you were anything else, you'd have told him what you are. But you didn't, because he's just another one of them, and you aren't. And it will never matter what you've done for him, if you break his rules." He was trying to be kind, in the way that harshness is sometimes the kindest turn we can do a friend.

Merlin did not want this to hurt him. It hurt him. It was one of the worst wounds which had yet been done to him. He let it fester, the way we do when a terrible fear has been suddenly and starkly called forth from our dreaming unconscious.

And so when the bandits came, as bandits do, and the villagers triumphed, all except Will, who perished of heroic second thoughts, Merlin let his dead friend take the blame for the sorcery which had dealt the finishing blow.

This was the first of many grievous errors he would make. He should have told Arthur, and let him hurt for a moment, so that later he could be saved. But he was young, and afraid, and he loved his master. And he would be punished most terribly for it, so we shall not be overly sanctimonious in our judgement of him, as if we have never let love stay our cowardly hand.

* * *

By this time, Arthur was accustomed to looking at Merlin in a way which a man on an internet program named after the _vinea aceae_ would call 'heart eyes, mothafucka'. It would not have been called 'heart eyes, mothafucka' in the time of Uther Pendragon; this is just to give you the feel of it.

He was sometimes caught out by Merlin when Merlin was at his chores, and then Merlin, having only a general idea of what the look meant-and unconsciously at that-would smile back in his own soppy way (it is hard not to be charmed when a handsome prince puts the entirety of his good and noble soul into his eyes and thrusts it at you; in addition to that, if he was busy being smitten, he was not busy superciliously giving orders, and that made him almost bearable), and ask, "Is there something on my face?"

"Just your face, which is bad enough, I suppose." Arthur returned to the paper on his writing desk; he had been doodling, but in a royal way, so that it would look official to Merlin. It was meant to be an official task anyway; it was an account of the royal stores, which he had been reviewing till Merlin had got fireplace soot on his cheek, and looked almost endearing, for Merlin.

They were not always busy longing at one another; sometimes they had to go to tournaments, and rescue maidens, and on Arthur's part, sit in on council meetings with a lot of boring old lords who thought Brevity must have been quite the droning sod, if it were necessary for him to be brief in order for anyone to take him seriously.

There was another Quest, though that is perhaps not quite the correct word for it, since it came about quite accidentally, and there was nothing which really had to be found, aside from their dignity, which came to be in dire straits, and was much sought after.

In those days, before he had the far heavier mantle of King to bear, Arthur often treated himself to a hunt; there were in those barbaric days of clean sky, unshorn woods, and sparse development herds of harts, skulks of foxes, richesses of martens, bevies of roes, cetes of badgers, routs of wolves, and boars in the singular all running about in the undergrowth, getting at the berries and the species which had the ill fortune of finding themselves on a lower link of the food chain. The latter were Arthur's favourite, being the most dangerous, and hunted on foot, like real men did, eye to eye with their foe, the spear braced in their callused hands, aught but steel and sinew engaged, and death mere feet from your tender mortality. The latter were Merlin's least favourite, for the same reasons.

It was on one of these hunts that they encountered the Questing Beast.

The good King Pellinore had recently passed on owing to a fatal dehydration brought on by some copious weeping in a magical barge; but it was a lovelorn weeping, so please do not be too cruel. He may have been a bit soft for this world, but that is no reason to ridicule a man; in fact, it must have taken him a great deal of courage to weep so openly for his lost Piggy, with his fellow adventurers sitting all about him, trying to pretend they did not know him.

This left the Questing Beast to kick about the woods, eating travellers and trying out all the hobbies which do not require opposable thumbs-but as it turns out, most of the interesting ones require a certain pollical dexterity, to the misfortune of the travellers.

The Questing Beast had 'in shape like a serpent's head, and a body like a leopard, buttocked like a lion and footed like a hart; and in her body there was such a noise as it had been twenty couple of hounds questing, and such noise that beast made wheresoever she went' (Geoffrey of Monmouth's _Historia Regum Britanniae_ , page 56). You can then probably imagine why the half of the hunting party which was not Arthur or Merlin (who had a frustrating duty to throw himself into all sorts of peril, thanks to Arthur's inability to ignore it) took one look at it, found suddenly that supper had not agreed with them, and ran away. Arthur was not accustomed to running away, but it did not take a second look to realise that his spear would not pierce a hide such as this, and he had a frustrating duty to avoid all sorts of peril, thanks to Merlin's inability to endure it.

"Run!" he screamed, and turning about, he grabbed Merlin round the waist, gripped his coat at the shoulder, and pulled him along afterward.

Merlin fell. This was why Arthur had grabbed him by the shoulder in the first place. He stopped to help him, relinquishing the spear; he had his arms about Merlin's waist now, and lifted him bodily, hearing the terrible bellowing behind them, and the strange shush of swift-pounded leaves; he did not have time to let Merlin fail at getting his legs underneath him.

"Arthur, go!" Merlin screamed, which was something he tried from time to time, when their demise was imminent, and which Arthur always ignored, assuming Merlin would someday be the death of him anyway, and if it was not one incident of incompetence which did him in, another would be along shortly, and he might as well meet it like a man.

"Get _up_ ," he hissed in Merlin's ear, wrestling him to his feet.

The Questing Beast assumed the striking position. These were not particularly challenging prey, but as she didn't know about the rules of fair fighting, she was prepared to eat them nevertheless. She thought they might be engaged in some sort of human mating ritual; she had been alone so long she did not remember how her own species mashed the fat, but she thought there had been a lot of similar thrashing about. She thought perhaps she ought to let alone whichever would lay the eggs, so she could afterward enjoy a little treat.

She opened her mouth to eat the larger one, who seemed to be the more aggressively protective of the two, and was therefore probably the male. She looked him full in the face. She stopped.

Arthur still had his arms round Merlin, and had thought to thrust him backward, so there was at least himself between Merlin and the beast; and then he had frozen, as one does in full view of a serpent coiled to strike, which will start at any small twitch.

The Questing Beast was looking at Arthur the way Arthur looked at Merlin. Arthur and Merlin both recognised the look, though they could not place where they had seen it, and for Arthur it was only a vague sensation of having felt what was in the Questing Beast's slitted yellow eyes, and sometimes nearly smothered for it.

The Questing Beast sat back on her haunches, and then laid down with her front legs primly beneath her. If she had had a chin, or hands, she would have cupped the one becomingly in the other, and batted her eyes, so that Arthur would know she was opening negotiations for his heart, and had already gifted him hers. She was at least able to bat her eyes, and then Arthur knew for certain why he had not been eaten: it was the exact look of the marriage prospects Uther occasionally shipped in from distant lands, to try their hands at fair Pendragon the younger.

Merlin made a choking sound. "Arthur...is it flirting with you?"

"Shut _up_ , Merlin. Back up slowly."

"Oh, no. I'm not sure I want to miss this."

Arthur grabbed his shoulder again, more roughly this time. He jerked the fabric of his coat so that Merlin had to rise onto his tiptoes, pulling him backward, carefully, one measured pace at a time, so he could gauge the beast's reactions and whether it intended to go on smoldering at him, or had decided he was not so dishy after all.

They walked in this way till the beast was out of sight, and then Arthur, with the grip he still had on Merlin's coat, jerked him about-face, so that they could finish the journey to Camelot without blundering into anymore trees (Merlin had walked into three).

"I can't believe you just _dazzled_ that thing into submission."

"Merlin, shut up. And not a word of this to anyone, or I'll have you beheaded."

"Of course. No problem. I wouldn't dream of it, my Lord." He pressed his lips together. "Don't you think it's all a bit unchivalrous, though? Just leaving your girlfriend out in the woods like this-you know there are loads of dangerous things out here. I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself-"

"Mer- _lin_."

"You know, I wonder why she took to you? I mean, there is a certain similarity between that beast, and what you look like first thing in the morning, I have to say, so maybe she thought-ow!"

Arthur smacked the back of Merlin's head again, for good measure.

* * *

Next morning, Merlin woke to the bells heralding an intruder.

He stumbled into Arthur's chambers, rubbing his eyes. "What's happening? Is it-" he stopped, seeing Arthur's face. It was thunderous. "What?"

Arthur moved his jaw round.

Merlin decided he could be like that, and moved to open the window.

A beady eye stared back at him; he screamed, in a manful way, and stumbled backward, tripping over Arthur's favourite chair. He took a moment to process the situation; he sat down in the chair so he would be supported in his time of need, and laughed till he had to abandon the chair altogether, and lie down on the cool floor, holding his stomach.

"It isn't _funny_ , Merlin!" Arthur hissed. "She's eaten three of the guard. No one can set foot outside! She's nesting-or whatever it is she does-in the lower town."

"Well, that's not so good, then," Merlin said, wiping his eyes. "What are we going to do?"

"We've got to draw her out somehow."

"You could offer yourself to her. You know, with a little...bow…" he trailed off, sensing he was very close to death.

"We need to trick her. What if one of her own kind were to show up?" Arthur suggested.

"We don't have one of her own kind. I don't think there _is_ another of her own kind."

Arthur looked at him with a particular gleam in his eye; Merlin did not like the gleam. He swung his feet down from the chair, where they had stayed as he'd melted down off it to sob into the floor. "I don't like that look. That's a 'Merlin I have a plan and you're the plan' look."

* * *

Merlin was the plan.

He was the very foundation of it, in fact.

Arthur could not simply stride into the lower town and take the beast tenderly by her hoof, and lead her away into the sunset with the people looking on, expecting great bloody deeds of him. Camelot was not in so very imminent danger at the moment; everyone had been confined to the castle while the Questing Beast paced outside, calling for her love. They had time for a Plot.

"We'll dress you up as another Questing Beast, and you can lure her away from Camelot."

"What if she notices I'm not an actual Questing Beast and eats me?"

Arthur clapped him on the shoulder. "We all have to take our chances in life."

It was decided, because Arthur had decided it, and he was the prince. Merlin did not like this logic, but could not argue with it, since Arthur was strong enough to push him out the window.

Since Arthur had sworn Merlin to secrecy on pain of very excruciating death, and since there was hardly a Questing Beast ensemble lurking beneath Arthur's bed, waiting for a gala, Merlin had to sneak into the seamstresses' quarters for supplies, and came back with his arms full of linen scraps and some old leather boots which he thought could be the hooves. He clipped some of the links from Arthur's mail-at great protest from Arthur-to go over the hood he would need to fashion, so that it might glimmer something like snake scales, in the sun, and if any onlookers were mostly blind, and all stupid.

He cut and stitched and pounded ineffectually with the butt of Arthur's sword.

As we have already said, Merlin was all thumbs with a needle and thread; he was not particularly adept with a sword either, especially when he was trying to use it as a hammer, and the sword did not want to be used as a hammer, and Arthur especially did not want it to be used as a hammer.

The final result was something like a pair of onesie pajamas. There was a hood to be pulled over the human head, with a row of mail messily stitched in one straggling row, so it looked rather as if the hood were cultivating a mohawk, which was not at all the style in that time. Merlin had used the tongue from one of Arthur's boots (Arthur did not yet know about it) for the serpent's tongue; this hung down wretchedly from the general maw area, and smelt of Arthur's feet. The leopard spots were done in egg tempera, which Arthur and Merlin had mixed too thickly, so that it had cracked everywhere, and gave the impression of this particular Questing Beast having contracted a horrid rash, possibly of the sexual variety, judging by the alarming colour of its lesions.

He pulled on the boots for his feet, and the ones for his hands.

"How do I look?"

Arthur's face made a movement as though it were trying to separate from itself. He held a hand to his mouth, and coughed. "Right. That's brilliant, Merlin. Now you better practise bounding about. You don't want to look too human. Your life depends upon it."

Merlin decided he was not paid enough for this, especially as he wasn't really paid anything, aside from his meals and the dubious 'honour' Arthur kept insisting was an integral part of his service.

He got down on all fours.

He fell over. (It is not easy walking about in four boots, when you have stitched the waist of your onesie too close, and given yourself no room to waggle.)

Arthur was in difficulty. He felt as if his spleen were coming up through his mouth. It was quite possible he was in that slothful transition between life and death, when every excruciating twitch of remaining fight seizes your slow-believing muscles.

Merlin bumped into the bed.

He bumped into the table.

The hood had fallen over his face, and revealed to him that he had forgotten to cut slits for his eyes (well, in the interest of technicality it had revealed nothing to him, certainly not the trunk at the foot of Arthur's bed).

"And what about...the baying?" Arthur asked, controlling himself in a way that reiterated his right to the divine Destiny which the dragon had foreseen of him.

There were strange noises from the prince's chambers that day; it was not really the business of the castle staff how he should conduct himself, so they swept past with their eyes straight ahead, though later there would be rumors he had had a lady who had got the bell-end of him most vigorously, and died of the honour.

Merlin did not know how he was to leave the castle to distract the beast, if no one was allowed to set foot outside it. Arthur pointed to the window.

"Oh sure, I'll just jump and hope she catches me, will I? After all, she's got lots of appendages like her mouth and _poisoned claws_ to break my fall."

"Stop being a girl, Merlin," Arthur demanded. "We'll lower you down with a rope. I'll tie it to the chair, and then sit in it. I'm heavier than you; it will hold."

"That sounds like a really ridiculous way to die," Merlin said doubtfully.

He was wrong; it was only _nearly_ a really ridiculous way to die.

He was lowered out the window, though Arthur had needed to wrap the rope in a sort of harness around him, since they had overlooked the fact that he couldn't very well grip it with his hands, if his hands were to keep up the charade of being hooves; they had ripped a hole for either eye, at least, so he could see, poorly, through the loop of mail that had come unstitched and was swinging down about his face.

The Questing Beast watched this even more doubtfully than Merlin had received the news that he was to be lowered out the window into the grip of an animal of such dubious mental state as to fall in love with Arthur. It would have not worked at all if the face on the hood had not been pretty all right; Arthur had painted it with a surprisingly nimble touch. It was a natural talent he might have to explore, if the Questing Beast did not eat Merlin and he wasn't busy feeling rather lousy about the whole thing.

"Go on, Merlin, you're fine," he said, in an encouraging voice as the Questing Beast swooped in and sniffed at him. She pushed at him with her snout.

" _Arthur_."

"Relax, you great big muppet. It's working. I'm lowering you down."

The Questing Beast watched the thing in the harness jerk, jingling musically. She was too confused to eat it. She poked at it again.

Merlin's head was now about even with the ledge of the window; the edge of it caught the hood, and jerked it back, so that his dark head emerged, which for a moment confused the Questing Beast more. She realised it was not a stunted Questing Beast with a disease of dubious sexual origins. She was understandably angry.

" _Arthur_!" Merlin howled, kicking off the wall as she lunged for him.

If you had been standing at the base of the castle, underneath the tower in which Arthur had his rooms, you would have seen only a tiny dot, revolving queerly, and a little shape flitting about it. The screaming would not have given you any helpful context; Arthur and Merlin could be heard yelling at one another at all hours of day and night, and it was by this point a thing unremarked.

But if you had been able to go a little higher, or if you had happened to be sitting in the tower across from it, drinking your last beer, since it was of obvious hallucinogenic powers, and those were the work of the Devil, you would have seen a man in a spotted linen onesie, swinging about wildly, flailing his hoof hands and crying out for absolution. Arthur was trying to grab the rope; Merlin was trying to fend off the Questing Beast with unobtrusive bursts of magic. This was accomplished with a lot of screaming (actually nothing whatsoever was really accomplished, since Merlin was only spinning about in circles, and Arthur could not get hold of the rope, and the Questing Beast could not get hold of Merlin).

"Merlin, stop _moving_!" Arthur demanded.

"I can't! If I stop moving, she'll eat me, you clot!" He had forgotten to add the 'pole' to the end of it. It was imperative that he pay more attention to not being eaten than to his insults.

Arthur in the meantime was trying to stretch out his legs far enough to get the sword he had dropped beneath the tip of one of his boots, without letting go of the rope. The Questing Beast was yanking the rope about so furiously that he was in danger of falling out the window. He would have gladly fallen out the window for the sake of Merlin, though afterward he would have said he'd only been looking for the fastest route away from his servant's incessant speaking.

He did not really want to kill the Questing Beast; it seemed a poor turn to do to something with the good sense to appreciate his natural charms, even if it was only a nasty old Questing Beast. But it had eaten three of the guard, and it was trying to eat Merlin.

Merlin howled some more, and got his boots (the ones on his feet) more firmly planted, so that he could run along the wall in higher and higher arcs, banging Arthur and chair against the sill; Arthur thought for a moment of letting him fall, or be eaten, after all. He thought, quickly, about which would be worse-and decided, begrudgingly, that the worst of all was still for there to be no Merlin at all.

He got one toe under the sword at last, and flipped it up into one hand, leaning the chair back so that it pinned the rope between the curved back of it and the sill, with all his weight coming down on it.

He plunged the sword backward, and in one clean stroke, took off her head; she plummeted majestically.

Merlin had to be hauled in by his armpits; they fell onto the floor with a great clatter, Merlin in Arthur's arms, Arthur with his nose pressed uncomfortably into his manservant's sweaty neck, which reeked awfully of Questing Beast and egg tempera.

"I hate you," Merlin wheezed.

"Cheer up, Merlin. You just did Camelot a great service," he panted, and amicably pounded Merlin on the back.

* * *

There is much still to correct. We must address the true role of wise Queen Guinevere, and noble Sir Lancelot; and there is the terrible secret of Arthur's birth, and the fall of Morgana Pendragon, more terrible still, yet to unravel. But we ought for the moment to leave it here, in more innocent times, with more innocent men.


End file.
